To many, it emphasised – more effectively than any official report or social study could ever do – the gulf between the city’s haves and have-nots, its rich and its poor.

The News has been highlighting the plight of Cambridge’s street sleepers ever since we first started publishing, nearly 130 years ago. In 1890, a couple of years after the newspaper was founded, we reported how the Mill Road workhouse “was full of tramps”.

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In 1966, we told readers: “More than 70 people are ‘sleeping rough’ in Cambridge each night, many in rat-infested, derelict houses.”

In 1978, the News turned the spotlight on what was being done to help, including highlighting the Church Army Hostel in Willow Walk, where a bed and a hot meal were laid on every night.

News reporters interview homeless man, 1989

In 1989, our reporters spent a night on the streets themselves, talking to homeless people about their experiences.

And in 1991, revealing the caring side of the town-gown relationship, we pictured Cambridge University students busking to raise money for homelessness charities.

Cambridge University students raise money for homeless, 1991

That compassionate attitude, of course, had always been there, and there is one remarkable story which shows just how strong it was. Many people who have lived in the Cambridge area since the 1970s will remember a tousled, bearded old man who used to sit on the base of the market square fountain, a roll-up in one hand, a bottle of vodka nearby. His name was Trevor Hughes, and to some, he was an ill-tempered drunkard, given to outbursts of angry abuse and disorderly behaviour. True enough, he could be what some described as a ‘devil’. But others, who took the trouble to talk to him, discovered he was a man of intelligence, sensitivity and humour, a character whom life had dealt a harsh hand, but who blamed no one for it. He had been a cricket coach in Yorkshire in his younger days, and was very knowledgeable about the game.

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In 1977, hauled into court to clock up his 100th conviction for being drunk and disorderly, he smiled at the magistrates and solicitors and said politely: “Good afternoon, everybody.” After admitting he had been drinking in the market square, and being rather noisy, he told the bench: “I like a drop of tiddly, but I don’t mean to be abusive. It’s when people say, ‘look at that dirty old so-and-so’ that I lose my temper, because I’m not like that.”

Trevor Hughes in the market square, 1970s

Trevor generally slept outdoors, mostly on benches, and just a few days before Christmas in 1978 came the sad news he had died. He was 66, and the cause of death was given as a heart attack. So well-known was he that his passing was reported in the News, and a funeral service was held in the church of St Mary the Less. More than 50 people were there, including university dons, a police superintendent, shopkeepers, a solicitor, and college staff. They had all known him, and liked him. Some had even paid his court fines, others had fetched him bottles of sherry from the well-stocked cellars of their colleges. The vicar, the Rev James Owen, told the congregation: “He was a personality in an age when the powers-that-be want everyone to conform. He could be difficult and awkward, but Trevor was a warm personality who added a richness to Cambridge.”

Church Army hostel Willow Walk, 1978

The News said in an editorial comment: “A society that can turn out for Trevor Hughes can hardly be all bad. There would surely have been cause to worry about our attitude if we had paid him even less notice in death than we had done in life: that really would have shown us to be callous and heartless.”